Steve Mazie Ponders, "Does the President Matter?"

Steven Mazie over at Big Think has a good essay reflecting on day one of the Hannah Arendt Center Conference "Does the President Matter? A Conference on the American Age of Political Disrepair." Mazie looks at three reasons to be skeptical of the claim that the President matters, or that it matters who is elected president.

1. Mitt Romney and President Obama are uncannily similar in a host of ways.
2. Structural constraints on the presidency radically limit the ability of chief executives to act in the domestic arena. 
3. Presidential campaigns do not attract candidates with true leadership skills.

In each case Mazie offers thoughtful comments on the way that president does and does not matter. Above all, his essay explore the paradox at the heart of last weekend's conference: That the President is ever more powerful and certainly has enormous political and symbolic power, and yet, on the big questions that matter most to many people, the president seems powerless to change the culture of politics in Washington. Just last weekend President Obama, campaigning in Florida, said: "The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside."

Mitt Romney jumped on this statement to condemn Obama and make the case that Obama had abdicated leadership. That was not Obama's point, which was that the President is not able single handedly to change the political culture. Whether Obama is correct or not, his statement reflects a frustration that many in and outside Washington share.

Read Mazie's take on the conference. You can also watch all of the talks from the conference on video here.

-RB